A prior art search of:
United States Patent Office Class 242, subcasses 613 and 613.1, and United States Patent Office Class 96.1 and 96.5.
While no relevant prior art was located, the sole patent found of interest is Stumpfi U.S. Pat. No. 4,515,331 issued May 7, 1985 having alternate rigid teeth and depressable spring-biased teeth depressable radially outwardly from any extended state inward position mountable on a small spindle to a depressed state mountable on a larger spindle that also is mountable by the remaining alternate teeth. That patent has no discernible bearing on nor relevance to the present invention.
This invention arose from potential problems that could be confronted by the lack of judicial evidentiary integrity being retained for recorded events embodied on audio and/or video tapes taken typically by the present inventor's patent patented subject matter of U.S. Pat. No. 5,400,185 issued Mar. 21, 1995 entitled Evidence Recorder and method of securing, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,545,129 issued Aug. 13, 1996, former U.S. Ser. No. 08/489,380 filed Jun. 12, 1995. The invention of aforenoted U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/740,390 and the present invention are each directed to avoiding such potential problems that could preclude admission of such recorded tapes as admissible evidence in judicial proceedings.
Apart from the preceding problems with the taking of any evidence by an audio and/or video cassette(s), is the fact that heretofore the tape could be reversed to utilize the second (opposite direction of winding) unrecorded side or edge of the tape. Such permissive practice invites disaster, when for example typically a police officer is preoccupied with impending or already present pressures of following and/or apprehending or investigating an already impending matter, that he will inadvertently load-up the tape for recording backward as to accidentally record-over the other side--the officer having forgotten and/or unaware of another officer having already once before reversed the cassette. Likewise, the police officer inadvertently might think that he has already reversed a tape for the purpose of recording on the opposite side, and based on that mistaken thought, he thereafter attempts to further record on the same fully recorded side--only to subsequently disasterously discover that the latest evidence did "not" get recorded at all.
The present invention accordingly includes as part of its objects, the creation of audio reel-tape(s) and/or video-audio combination tape(s) avoid the possibility of occurance of aforenoted problems, and of the creation of novel casing(s) and/or recorders preclude such problems. Moreover an object are to alter one or more of the tape recorder and of the cassette casing(s) such that there would be precluded the possibility of intentional seruptitious tampering with or accidentally wiping-out or mutilating recorded evidence from a tape, initially and/or originally recorded data on such reel-mounted tapes.
Another object is to avoid substitution use of cassette tapes devoid of the protection(s) afforded by this invention, to require audio and/or video cassette recorder and/or player to embody structure that precludes insertion and/or operation of any cassette recorder and/or player reel-containing casings that do not embody such protection(s).